Bridging Culture, Community & Science - Inside ITEST Summit

A comprehensive project for students and teachers, CREST networks 11 island and coastal schools in rural Maine with academic institutions, community stakeholders and IT professionals, to integrate STEM into community-based curriculum projects. Most of CREST’s target population lives in Maine\'s most remote areas, where opportunities for IT learning are rare. The program’s interdisciplinary approach aims to get students from rural areas excited about how they can use technology to improve their community and how they can apply their love of technology in a future career. Each individual CREST project weaves three focus technologies – web design, ethnography, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into a curriculum addressing the community’s unique challenges. In the featured profile students work with the State marine conservation agency and local fishermen to track critical changes in the lobster population. Students experience first-hand how to apply marine biology, data collection and GIS mapping skills acquired in a formal setting, to support the struggling commercial lobster fishery – the heart of their community’s economy and culture. Another strand of the project artfully weaves sophisticated GIS technology and mapping, Web design, and boat building into a student-inspired ethnography research project to tell the proud story of their ancestors – the Deer Isle Boys.